Chapter 1 

Mogor

I pray to the lunar goddess that this rotten piece of land is Rach.

My lungs burn. I cough, and a torrent of icy, black water erupts from my chest. The world comes back in a rush of pain—sand grinding into my raw skin, the roar of a violent surf, and a cold that seeps into my very marrow. 

I'm alive. The thought is a curse, not a relief.

I drag myself clear of the waves, my body a mass of bruises. The beach is a graveyard of wreckage. Splintered masts and torn rigging from the Storm Shadow litters the shore.

My nostrils flare, tasting the air. It’s unmistakable. Rot. Old blood. A faint, sulfuric tang seeping up from a wounded world.

My first thoughts should be for my clan brothers. Gruk. Othic. Thoktar. All of them scattered like bones when the storm took us . Duty demands I find my kin.

But the vow is louder than duty.

I was only on that raider voyage to jump ship here, anyway. This shipwreck has just saved me the trouble of desertion. 

My father. Killed. My only lead: the words of a drunk in a tavern back home. “Rach. Go to the Dark Market. Coin can buy anything there… even the name of a killer.”

It’s the only words I have.

I move inland. The trees are twisted, their bark peeling like diseased skin. Everything on this gods-cursed continent wants to kill me.

A chittering sound breaks through my focus. I stop dead. The forest has gone silent around me, the usual ambient noises vanishing . That's never good. 

I smell them before I see them—musk and stale urine. Rodan.

A pack of them bursts from the brush. They are vile things, rat-like but the size of large mountain cats. Six of them.

Finally. Something tangible to hurt.

The alpha leaps first, a screeching ball of mange and teeth. I don't even draw my axe. I catch it mid-air by its throat. Its momentum stops instantly. I squeeze. There is a wet crunch, and the creature goes limp . I toss the carcass aside.

Another latches onto my forearm, its teeth sinking deep into my flesh. I roar, not in pain, but in pure, unadulterated fury. I rip it off, taking a chunk of my own skin with it, and slam it into the ground. Once. Twice. It stops twitching .

The remaining three hesitate. They smell the blood—theirs and mine. I am the predator now. I snatch my axe from my back and hurl it. It spins end over end, a blur of steel, and catches the slowest one in the spine, nearly cleaving it in two.

I retrieve my axe, wrenching it free from the ruined carcass with a wet sucking sound. 

My forearm throbs, bleeding sluggishly. I ignore it. 

I know now that this shithole is Rach; the rodans just taught me that. 

Now I just need to find the Market.

I’m about to move on when I hear it. A new sound. Not the skittering of beasts, but a single, sharp snap of a twig.

I freeze, my axe already in my grip.

Fifty yards ahead, half-hidden by a curtain of hanging moss, a figure crouches over a snare line. A human, dressed in ragged furs, a brace of suru slung over his shoulder.

He doesn't see me. He's focused on his trap.

Answers.

I take one step, the soft mud sucking at my boot. The sound is enough.

The hunter’s head snaps up. His eyes, set deep in a face gaunt with hunger, go wide. He sees me—a six-hundred-pound orc, covered in mud and fresh rodan blood, axe in hand.

He doesn't scream. He just drops his catch and bolts.

"Wait!" I roar, my voice a useless thunder in the dense woods.

He scrambles, terror giving him speed. He plunges into the thicket like a panicked deer.

He knows these woods. He knows where he is going.

I give chase. I crash through the undergrowth, branches whipping my face, my heavy boots pounding the earth. He's agile, weaving through thorns and ducking under low-hanging branches while I have to shoulder my way through, shattering deadwood.

"Stop!" I bellow again, gaining ground.

He glances back, his face a mask of pure terror, and pushes himself harder. He is not just running wild; he is following a path. He leaps over a fallen log and vanishes into a wall of vines.

I burst through the vines an instant later, ready to grab him—and stop dead.

He's gone. Vanished.

I stand in a small, muddy clearing, growling in frustration. It’s a crossroads—three paths diverging in the mud.

Half-buried in the sludge at my feet is a fallen, rotten wooden sign. I crouch, wiping the green slime from its surface. 

Crude letters are carved into the wood: THE MARKET.

An arrow is carved below it, but the sign is broken, half-submerged. The arrow points down into the mud, useless, its intended path a mystery.

I look at the three paths again. One narrow and smelling of swamp. One disappearing into a dark thicket.

And the one the hunter took—the widest path, churned by heavy traffic.

He was running for safety. He was running to the Market.

The failed chase gave me the answer the broken sign could not.

I grip the leather haft of my axe until my bloody knuckles ache, adjust the straps of my empty pack, and take the first step down the wide path.